May 6, 2023

Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974

In these snippets from my story “Though The Brightest Fell,” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2018/02/25/appointment-with-an-angel-on-monday-flash-fics-for-february-26-2018-by-jeff-baker/ Eddie, an elderly a man being taken to Paradise by an angel, asks the angel for a brief detour through time and space…

Eddie wasn’t surprised an angel would know about Gino. They’d been fifteen that summer; Gino had been young, dark and gorgeous. They’d hung out at the lake. On the final day, Eddie had tried kissing Gino and Gino had shoved him away and used an anti-Gay slur. Thank God he’d never told anybody. But before that, the summer had been wonderful.

The angel grants him that last request. To re-live one moment when he was fifteen…Here’s the snippet.

“C’mon! Let’s jump!” Gino said, standing over the lake.

“Uh, no, it’s too high,” Eddie said, suddenly remembering that this had happened before and they hadn’t jumped. He grabbed Gino’s hand and jumped off the edge, the two of them whooping as they fell into the warm, beautiful water, surrounded by bubbles. As they broke the surface, laughing and splashing towards shore, Eddie took a last glance at young, gorgeous Gino and stepped onto the bank as he felt himself drawn upwards towards eternity.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The title is from Act 4, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.”